About the various file formats

The documents in the COSMOS document library
are available in various file formats suitable for various purposes.
Turn results, including graphical maps, are also available in different
file formats to enable you to view and print turn results in
the highest possible quality for your platform.
This page attempts to list the pros and cons
of the various formats and gives you pointers to which software you
need to view and/or print the files.

All documents, text reports and maps are available in this format.
Maps can be had either grey-scale for black and white printing or
in colour for on-screen viewing and colour printing.

PDF gives you the highest quality of the document and is suitable
both for viewing and printing from a PDF viewer. The Acrobat viewer
comes with a plug-in for popular browsers so you can view and print
PDF directly from your web browser.
The physical lay-out of a PDF document is exactly
what the designed intended and is identical whether you view it on screen
or print it. You can zoom in on details on e.g. a map without the result
becoming grainy.

PDF documents from this site are divided into pages corresponding to real
physical paper pages. This means that if you intend to print the document
you should get a version which was made for the paper format you use.
All documents are available either for A4 paper (European standard) or
US letter paper.

Some documents (like rule books) are available in two PDF formats:
One with hypertext references and one without.

The hypertext version contains clickable coloured links in the text
for easy navigation when browsing the document on the screen,
e.g. in the table of contents, in the index and for cross references.
This format is superior to the HTML version as it looks a lot better and
has exactly the same pages as the printed version. You can print out
the hypertext version but the coloured links tend to be dimmer
than the rest of the text when printed on non colour printers.

The non-hypertext PDF version is intended for printing. There are no hypertext
references and thus the files are smaller and all text is black.

Get a PDF viewer: Adobe's free "Acrobat" PDF reader can be
downloaded from their web site
for free. You can also view and print PDF with the free PostScript/PDF viewer
GSview
(but in my opinion the Acrobat reader offers better navigation).

All documents, text reports and maps are available in this format.
Maps can be had either grey-scale for black and white printing or
in colour for on-screen viewing and colour printing.

PostScript gives you the highest quality of the document and is suitable
for printing on a PostScript printer or viewing with a PostScript
previewer. If you do not have a PostScript printer (these are mostly found as
network printers in office environments) you can probably still print
PostScript files from a PostScript previewer.

The look of the PostScript version of a document is completely identical
to the look of the PDF version (and in fact the PDF is generated from
the PostScript). For most documents the PDF file is smaller than the
PostScript file in raw format, but after compression the PostScript file is
always the smaller of the two. Game maps are always smaller in
PostScript than in PDF (large maps very markedly so).

PostScript files do not have hypertext references and thus for on-screen
browsing you are probably better off with the PDF versions. If download size
is important for you, you should consider getting compressed PostScript rather
than PDF, especially for printing.

Get a PostScript previewer:
You can also view and print PostScript (and PDF) with
GSview,
a free PostScript/PDF viewer.

Most documents are available in HTML (HyperText Markup Language, the
format for web pages) but illustrations (if any) are not included in the
main file; they come as separate GIF images (you don't have to worry
about this if you are reading the document on-line).
Game turn text reports are also available in this format
while maps are not (they are available in GIF format, see below).

The HTML versions of e.g. rule books are intended only for on screen
viewing, not for printing, as cross references, table of contents and
the index become unusable when printed from HTML (get PDF or PostScript
when you need a printed copy). Turn reports can be printed from HTML but
look a lot better in PDF or PostScript (especially the map notes can be
difficult to decipher in HTML as the all-important indentation is less
pronounced in HTML than in the other formats).

Most documents are available as plain text files (iso-8859-1 encoding).
Illustrations (if any) are of course not included
but come as separate GIF images.
Game turn text reports are also available in this format.

Plain text files can be viewed with your favourite editor or text file
viewer (even your web browser). Usually they can also be sent directly to the
printer for printing. Make sure you use a fixed pitch font when viewing or
printing a text file (i.e. all the characters are equally wide and a space
is the same width as a printed character).

Only get text files if there is absolutely no alternative which works for you!
A lot of information is lost in conversion from the richer formats.
Only if you are writing a program to automatically
extract information from your turn reports may this format be
the best choice.

Game maps are available as GIF images, either scaled so that each hex
is a certain number of pixels wide or scaled so that the map has a fixed
size, no matter how many hexes are on it.
Maps can be had either grey-scale for black and white printing or
in colour for on-screen viewing and colour printing.
Illustrations used in documents
such as rule books are also available as GIF images, for use when the main
text is in HTML or plain text format.

GIF images is the oldest web standard for graphics and thus any web browser
and almost any image viewing program can display and print them.

The great disadvantage with GIF compared to PDF or PostScript is that
GIF is a raster format and thus zooming in on part of an image
does not reveal more detail but merely makes the image grainy.
GIF files of sufficient resolution for printing are very large and
thus may take a long time to download, depending on your connection.
Get PDF or PostScript instead!